Date Published: January 5, 2021
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing Corporation
This book chronicles the effects of long term systemic and institutional racism. Using South-Central Los Angeles as an example, the book chronicles the forty-year process of attempting to provide technology and the effect of the lack of ability to access technology. The extensively documented case has shown that the denial of civil rights and technology would lead to the inevitable results that have occurred. This book deals with the cause and effect of the refusal by the City of Los Angeles to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the City. The ruling identified the City’s attempts to limit technology in the poorest areas of the City as a civil rights violation. The complicity of major Black politicians is also explored.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, before the growth of the internet, cable television was the newest technology available throughout the United States and the world. It would dramatically change America’s use of the television and related industries. The denial would serve to provide long-term negative consequences within the community including education, poor health, crime and gangs that have run rampant over the last four decades within South-Cental Los Angeles.
WITHOUT SELF-RESPECT
The white sheet covers the bullet-ridden body of the 15-year-old
who was walking home from school. 3 hours later a 16-year-old and an
18-year-old are arrested for the murder. People drive past without even
gawking. This is not an unusual
circumstance but rather occurs weekly if not daily in most urban minority
communities. The odds are in favor of all the participants in this crime being
black.
The wanton disregard for the lives of other children in
their own neighborhood is merely a symbol of the complete lack of self-respect
that exists within themselves. This lack of self-respect has led to murder
being the number one killer of Black youth in America.
This lack of self-respect is not something that a child is
born with but something that a child acquires during their formative years. The
continuing reinforcement of negative images and actions of young black
Americans reinforces negative stereotypes that have been thrust upon them by
decades of mistreatment going unchecked.
With the negative self-image firmly implanted into our youth
by media, including television, music videos and video games is it any wonder
that people hold the value of life so cheaply. The same negative images that
are portrayed within the black community are also portrayed throughout the rest
society. Why is it that you think the general society should have a higher
respect for you than you have for yourself? It doesn't work that way.
The news media continues to reinforce the perceived lack of
value in black life. Events that would sicken the average American citizen,
like the mass murder of Black children, are simply ignored by national and
local news media.
More than 30 years ago, in 1979, my brother and I saw a way
to improve the quality of life in South Central. The advent of cable television
would provide the resources and technology to improve the educational and
economic outlook for a downtrodden community.
This opportunity offered us the chance to alter the image
that was being portrayed through the media. This was a new opportunity to help
shape the images that would reflect a more positive view of Black America. The
influence that cable television has had upon America cannot be minimized. Cable was important to the community because
they had never had the opportunity to use mass media for their own development.
We naively thought community benefit had something to do with the work of City
Hall.
We had no idea that the country's most famous black
politician, our own mayor, Tom Bradley, would be the largest impediment to our
goals. By trying to force us to sign our business away to his friends and
benefactors, Mayor Bradley set in motion a drama that would take us all the way
to the United States Supreme Court. Our story includes the worst of political
strong-arming; as he and his minions jammed ignorant, ill-equipped companies through
the licensing process ahead of our own. Mayor Bradley was insuring his cronies
would profit from South-Central cable as the people of South Central would
continue to suffer from a lack of education, justice, economic development and
representation at City Hall.
The story of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Preferred Communications
versus the City of Los Angeles is documented in the book " Anatomy of a
Hustle: Cable Comes to South-Central LA". The history of the City of Los
Angeles depriving citizens of South Central of the constitutional rights cannot
be changed. The ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1986 clearly
established that the City was violating our civil rights and had been doing so
since the beginning of the licensing process in 1979. Despite this, the city would continue to refuse
to allow the development of a cable television system by a Black-owned company
that had all financing and technology in place.
We have watched, for
thirty years, the decimation of an entire community because of the greed of
public officials at Los Angeles City Hall.
How do you think I feel watching deaths and poverty that could have been
partially alleviated?
We must seize the new opportunities that have been developed
through the Internet and provide the funding that is necessary to develop a
mass media presence through the use of broadband technology. Like all
opportunities this too shall pass. We cannot expect the government to provide
any assistance nor can we expect "civil rights organizations" to
spearhead this development. We must do it for ourselves.
He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, but moved shortly thereafter with his family to New York City. He attended Northern Arizona University with the assistance of a baseball scholarship. In the late 1970s, after getting his CPA license, he relocated from a large international accounting firm in San Francisco to a major international investment banking firm in Beverly Hills.
His first book is titled “Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central Los Angeles” (2012). This is his second book.
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